Truman ends on high note with .500 season

BRISTOL TWP., Pa. — Much like its season as a whole, it was a real feel-good story for the Truman High School football team Thursday.

In addition to posting a convincing 34-7 triumph over Conwell-Egan for its third win in a row against the Eagles, Truman compiled a six-win season on the field for the first time since way back in 1995. This is no small accomplishment when you consider the program was on life support just a few years ago.

“I couldn’t be prouder,” said Truman coach Ed Cubbage after his Tigers finished the year at 6-6 and dropped Conwell-Egan to 3-8. “It’s a real tribute to our (19) seniors. I mean when they were freshmen the program almost folded.”

It’s a far different story now for the Tigers, who dressed over 50 players yesterday and will face a less challenging schedule next year when they drop down a division and will no longer have to play teams like Pennsbury and Neshaminy.

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Truman’s strength was apparent from the start on a cold and blustery Thanksgiving Day morning. The first time the Tigers got the ball they went 65 yards on just four plays and reached the end zone on a 9-yard burst by Jordan Livingston. Following a Conwell-Egan fumble deep in its own territory, Truman then quickly built the lead to 14-0 when Trysten Hunt scored on a 5-yard run.

With Truman’s defense allowing nothing, it looked like the game would be a total rout at this point. Instead, Conwell-Egan’s temporarily defense stiffened when it did a much better job of stopping the jet sweep.

Even better, from a Conwell-Egan perspective, it was also to score late in the first half when Joe Ruggerio burst threw the line and outran everyone en route to a 67-yard touchdown. Just like that a first half that was nearly completely dominated by Truman ended with the Tigers ahead by just the score of 14-7.

Time to get back to pounding the ball and keeping it simple.

“I think in the second quarter we might have gotten a little too cute,” conceded Cubbage. “In the second half we wanted to run right at them. We pretty much ran the same play over and over again.”

It worked to perfection as Truman kept punching Conwell-Egan in the gut with inside power runs by Livingston and Hunt. In the third quarter, the Tigers put together drives of 65 and 56 yards that were both capped by TD runs by Hunt.

Named the games’s Most Valuable Player and an all-SONL selection as a linebacker, Hunt also scored on a 7-yard run in the fourth quarter. Add it all up and it was four touchdowns for Hunt and 136 yards on 19 carries.

Not far behind was Livingston, who also went over the century mark by rushing for 112 yards on 14 carries. As a team, Truman piled up 351 yards on 58 rushes with Gianni Adamo, Bobby Hill and quarterback Jake Zolna also contributing some key yardage.

Other than Ruggerio’s second quarter run and some late passes with the game already well decided, Conwell-Egan had no success moving the ball. The good news is Conwell-Egan had only nine seniors on this year’s 53-player squad and is also headed in an upward direction after the school nearly closed just a couple of years ago.

In other words, both programs know what it’s like to pretty much hit rock bottom. And if Conwell-Egan is looking for a model on how to turn things around, all it needs to do is look a Truman.